JOIN USThere are people in this world who cannot take 'don't know' for an answer. My colleague is a classic example. He reacts in a rather weird manner when encountered by such a negative response.
At a monthly meeting of the residents welfare association, he asked the President whether he had received the free dhoti and saree for pongal announced by the state government for ration card holders. On being told in the negative, my colleague wanted to know why he had not received it, as they were neighbours. When the President politely said he did not know why the distribution did not cover some families, my friend banged his forehead in sheer exasperation and left in a huff, exclaiming how even god could not save this country of scams.
At the meeting for discussion on Union Budget 2018, my colleague chose to point out that although the proposals harp on farmer welfare, seldom does the government care to see its effective implementation. He quoted the case of the Thiruvaiyaru firka farmers of Tanjore, who reportedly did not receive the promised compensation for paddy samba under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana 2016-17. My friend wanted to know if there was any proposal in the current Budget to address this social menace and save our farmers, to which the moderators unequivocally responded that they had no answer to his question.
This infuriated my colleague who shot back questioning the point of such discussions if no solutions were being mooted in the Budget - which had just turned into an annual ritual - and if it did not spell out threadbare the steps being taken for effective redressal of the ills that continued to plague our agrarian economy. As expected, the discussion on the Budget came to an abrupt end.
While returning home, a good 20 km away from the venue of the meeting, I boarded the metropolitan bus that came that way and as luck would have it, my colleague too boarded the same bus and sat next to me. I closed my eyes feigning to be asleep and prayed that he would not engage me in any conversation during the commute. At the first stop, there was chaos when a lady alighting from the bus with her husband, lost balance, fell down and injured herself.
After a quick post-mortem of the incident, my colleague wanted to know why when men could alight from a bus in the direction of its movement, women preferred to get down facing the opposite direction and cause needless hold-ups. I looked at his face for a moment and then at the bus door, and in a flash, chose to jump out of the bus and walk home rather than tell him I had no answer to his million dollar question.